Kai Wegner Will Not Be Mayor Again
Berlin's governing mayor Kai Wegner announced he will not run for a second term, and still faces heavy pressure for his resignation.
Kai Wegner has not had an auspicious tenure as Berlin's mayor. Since taking over in April 2023, he and his CDU-led coalition have engineered roughly €3 billion in budget cuts to culture, transportation, education, and climate programmes, including the end of the popular €29 BVG ticket. There was a major funding scandal that involved funneling millions of euros earmarked for combating antisemitism into handpicked projects. He's also padded the police budget in the name of expanded surveillance powers and critisised the Berlinale for giving a top film prize to pro-Palestinian filmmakers.
But none of those failures put an end to his reign as mayor, instead it's what he did in January, after a targeted attack on the city's power grid caused a 100-hour blackout, that has landed him in career-ending hot water. While 45,000 homes with without power during a freezing week of winter, Kai Wegner went to play tennis with his girlfriend. And then, a Tagesspiegel investigation revealed, he lied about it.
"On the morning of the day of the disaster, you did not make a single official phone call."